Europa / Europe and the EU + EEA

With Washington's loyalties in flux and Europe feeling abandoned, the unthinkable is being discussed: will the continent's nuclear arsenal expand beyond its current custodians?

On March 18, 2025, the Hungarian Parliament passed legislation aimed at protecting children from assemblies that promote homosexuality. Although the amendment imposes general limitations on freedom of assembly, it is commonly understood as a ban on the LGBTQ+ Pride march, just ahead of the 30th anniversary in 2025. The new law amends the act of freedom of assembly (Act LX of 15), the act on misdemeanours (Act II of 2012), and the act on the use of facial recognition (Act CLXXXVIII of 2015). The new law also criminalizes attempts to circumvent this ban, making it a misdemeanour to organize, lead, or participate in such assemblies. Facial recognition may be used to prevent, thwart, investigate, interrupt, or sanction gatherings that fall within the scope of the prohibition.

The new law purposefully violates European human rights standards on freedom of assembly and LGBTQ+ rights, as well as fundamental values of the European Union, such as the rule of law and democracy (Article 2 TEU). From the outset, the Hungarian government made it clear that the measures mean to defy European standards (labelled as Brussels’ demands) in order to protect children from “aggressive LGBTQ propaganda.” In doing so, the Hungarian government presented an open invitation to European constitutional actors (including the European Commission) to address these new restrictions on freedom of assembly and LGBTQ+ rights in terms of a violation of democracy and the key commitment to the basic terms of Union membership as set out in Article 2 TEU.

The subject of these restrictions on political participation, the manner in which they were enacted, and their regressive impact call for a robust legal response grounded in the defense of democracy as a European value. The legal and institutional foundations for such a response already exist. It is now incumbent upon European constitutional actors to activate the mechanisms that protect democracy as a founding value of the Union in the face of a clear, frontal attack by a recalcitrant member state.

The Georgian Dream government has decided to create a ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ to ostensibly oversee various branches of the executive power. The name of the planned agency mirrors that of a so-called department established by unelected tech billionaire Elon Musk during US President Donald Trump’s second term.

A US think tank that recently opened a Brussels office to lobby for aggressively lower taxes is received with open arms by the Commission. But who is behind the organisation, and who funds it? The Transparency Register fails to reveal dark money flows – in the Tax Foundation’s case from US right-wing libertarian sources – and as such clearly needs a make-over.

"With the mud it’s a losing battle. It wins. It always wins. It becomes like cement and it’s impossible to remove it". This is Francesca Placci, a young woman from Faenza, speaking about the floods that devastated the Romagna region. The same words could come from the mouth of any other flood victim, because most of the time the fight is with the mud, a mud that never seems to completely go away.

To learn more go to:

https://stopscanningme.eu/

cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/14261109

A big plea to you to support "Tax-the-Rich". The aim is to tax the super-rich in order to finance more climate protection. If this EU citizens' initiative reaches certain thresholds, it must be scrutinised. A powerful tool if it is used.

"An EU Citizens' Initiative does not have to reach the threshold in all countries, only in 7 out of 27"

The closest: France 188% 🇩🇰 87% 🇩🇪 80% Belgium 64% 🇮🇹 44% Netherlands 32% Slovenia 26%

Deadline 9.10.24

The main Fediverse community for Europe is located at [email protected] - please don’t submit many new posts to this sub on Lemmyworld. We are considering the board to be sunset and in a transition period for the next few weeks, after which it will be locked for new posts. Thanks.

Basically, title

[email protected] for the new community

Basically, title.

[email protected] is well established, on a clearly European instance, and with active moderators (shoutout to @[email protected] )

In this context, why split discussions between [email protected] and here?

For people curious about feddit.de recent issues, this post on [email protected] clarifies the next steps: https://lemmy.world/post/16420574

In summary, people are getting organized to manage the handover from the current admin to the new organization (kind of a similar process to what happened to feddit.uk some time ago)

Of course, I'm not saying that other "europe" communities shouldn't exist. [email protected] is a community that follows lemmy.ml political stance, and [email protected] is a more laid back community. But for a general news-focused Europe community, [email protected] seems like a solid choice for now.

Yesterday, the traditionally highly conservative legal affairs committee voted to end geo-blocking of films and series in some limited contexts. It's a tectonic shift from the previous position of the legal affairs committee, and comes ahead of today's vote in the more progressive Internal Market & Consumer protection, where MEPs will call for a gradual abolition of geo-blocking.